Upping the Stakes on the Value of Organizational Information

Recently minted corporate fraud legislation requiring CEOs and CFOs to sign off on the veracity of the numbers contained in their corporate financials has just upped the ante exponentially on the value and accuracy of organizational information. Enterprise business intelligence (BI) initiatives are an ideal way to get a handle on the accuracy and completeness of corporate information  financial and otherwise. However, many of the folks I talk with don't yet have a concrete plan in place for their BI project beyond the "pilot" or proof-of-concept stage. That's a disaster waiting (impatiently) to happen.

Building a pilot BI project is technologically and logistically challenging enough in itself. Rolling the BI system out to the entire organization is a mammoth undertaking, and there are a couple of planning and technological pitfalls that can put any enterprise-wide BI project into a corporate quagmire. However, if you know about  and make plans to avoid  them up front, you can avoid the quagmire and the possible unpleasant consequences that have recently come with it.